Nugget Hero: A Day in the Life

6:30 a.m.Wake up, get ready for work. Check e-mails (which include a subscription to a CCIE message board). Leave for work shortly after (1+ hour commute).

8:00 a.m. Arrive at work. Three meetings before lunch. Not much time for anything else – was hoping to finish assembling our lab. Maybe after lunch.

12:15 p.m. Head to lunch with the team. Our lunches are usually a working lunch, discussing issues/projects, and quite often, are educational for the junior engineers. Head back to work after lunch.

5:00 p.m. Leave work.

6:15 p.m. Arrive at home. Dinner with the family once I walk in the door. One of the twins managed to climb on top of the kitchen table while I was gone (she’s 2 years old). Best time of the day… I get to finally relax!

6:45 p.m. Start “family time”: watch TV, play with the kids, and try to relax.9:30 p.m. Was supposed to start labbing two hours ago. Turn on my Cisco rack. Work through a few hands-on labs.

12:30 a.m. Call it a day on the hands-on labs. Got frustrated on a particular topic (PPP Authentication). I don’t use it at work, and for some reason had some strange issues that I figured were due to my lack of understanding between the various modes (CHAP/PAP/EAP). Decided that’d be a perfect time to watch Jeremy Ciora’s Nugget on HDLC/PPP.

12:45 a.m. Start watching the HDLC/PPP Nugget on my right monitor, and on my left screen, labbed out the same things Jeremy was doing to help solidify my understanding. Paused as-needed to perform some debug’s and see if I can break things (and fix them).

1:30 a.m. Finished the Nugget.

1:45 a.m. Bedtime! Finally.

One caveat: I could not maintain this schedule on a daily basis. I generally do this every other day, with the “in-between” days consisting of only 1-2 hours of labbing (or videos/reading).

On a final note, I did schedule my CCIE lab exam. I will be taking my first stab at it in March 2013 (only 8 months!)- so I really need to keep this schedule in place, and keep learning!